A Woman Is Only Half Of Something

Who Claims Truth, Truth Abandons. History Is Hir'd, Or Coerc'd, Only In Interests That Must Ever Prove Base. She Is Too Innocent, To Be Left Within The Reach Of Anyone In Power,- Who Need But Touch Her, And All Her Credit Is In The Instant Vanish'd, As If It Had Never Been. She Needs Rather To Be Tended Lovingly And Honorably By Fabulists And Counterfeiters, Ballad-mongers And Cranks Of Ev'ry Radius, Masters Of Disguise To Provide Her The Costume, Toilette, And Bearing, And Speech Nimble Enough To Keep Her Beyond The Desires, Or Even The Curiosity, Of Government.

All Variables Are Independent.

Like So Many Named Places In California It Was Less An Identifiable City Than A Grouping Of Concepts--census Tracts, Special Purpose Bond-issue Districts, Shopping Nuclei, All Overlaid With Access Roads To Its Own Freeway.

A Woman Is Only Half Of Something There Are Usually Two Sides To.

It Is A Curve Each Of Them Feels, Unmistakably. It Is The Parabola. They Must Have Guessed, Once Or Twice - Guessed And Refused To Believe - That Everything, Always, Collectively, Had Been Moving Toward That Purified Shape Latent In The Sky, That Shape Of No Surprise, No Second Chance, No Return. Yet They Do Move Forever Under It, Reserved For Its Own Black-and-white Bad News Certainly As If It Were The Rainbow, And They Its Children...